Helpless

by Andrew Vogel

Crude chopped onions, celery, carrot,
scattered on the board before her.

He is listening earnestly;
he’s learned to do that.

How many times had she tried
to explain it, but again

the old incoherence.
I’m sorry, Aoine confesses.

You haven’t done anything.

Ceasing to chop, she turns
on him, knife in hand,

snatches the mug he holds
between them, slams knife

and mug on the counter,
turns blunt into the embrace,

plunges her hands in the well of his back,
presses her ear to breast bone.

She rattles like a plastic kite caught
in a gnarl of winter tree, harrowed

night and day by swiveling winds.

They have no word for this rite,

never had, and she could not change
a single thing about it, only she wants

to say it, to have it said, to give him
some sound to hold around her, beyond

the sense, so she could let free
and drift with him to ground.